Customers often won’t log in to their accounts to search and browse, rather wait until point of checkout to identify themselves.

Beyond these data difficulties, businesses also commonly suffer from technology and process challenges.

Siloed data across tools, channels, campaigns and business units. Data, data everywhere, but you can’t make it sync. For many, this is a perceived barrier to entry. The technology to pull it all together, such as marketing cloud solutions and API technology, is readily available.

Lack of strategy. Personalization is a marketing strategy, not just a tactic. It’s a mistake to implement a tool, and set-it-and-forget it. Think through your hypotheses of personalization. What content should be shown to what audiences, at what time, for what ends? Determine which rules, constraints and exclusions should be applied to your tools for the most effective targeting.

Lack of testing. Design a process for testing and measurement. You can A/B test without personalization, but shouldn’t personalize without A/B testing. (Or multivariate).

Lack of human resources. To execute well, you need strategists and analysts, as well as content creators and management. Don’t underestimate this, or under-invest.

Personalization can be very effective, but to succeed, marketers need to begin with strategy to determine which types of data are required to serve each personalization hypothesis, ensure that data can be accessed and integrated into the marketing program and tools, with the proper constraints and testing process.

We’ll be covering more granular personalization topics in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.